


Rough Cut

by zenstrike



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Awkward Romance, Established Relationship, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff and Humor, Fond Keith, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Romance, Secret Relationship, Space-faring adventuring, allura is furious, it’s just very silly, just implied, not @ klance but @ poop, though that’s not really made explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 13:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15001952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: The war effort makes demands of everyone.or, that time the paladins are forced to go on a hunt for a diamond and Lance makes everything a little more difficult for Keith.





	Rough Cut

**Author's Note:**

> s3 established klance being dorks is my jam.
> 
> I hope this makes you laugh.
> 
> edit: for minor edits for clarity and (while screaming) typos. (6/22/2018)

    It was the greenest place they’d been to in a long, long time. Pidge had taken one sniff of the air, muttered “foothills,” and immediately began squinting for mountains. As far as Keith was concerned, the rolling hills and overgrown roots were as _good_ as mountains.

    “Oh Keith,” Pidge sighed. “You should see the Rockies.”

    Hunk whistled his appreciation.

    This had sparked discussion.

    “You ever fly over Greenland?” Lance made a gesture that Keith thought was kind of like a plane. He was grinning at them all, crowded around Pidge under the watchful eye of Green. “ _Ice_. That’s something.”

    “You’ve flown over Greenland?”

    Lance blinked at Keith. “No.” He shrugged and looked halfway to sheepish. “But I’ve _been_ in a _plane_ that someone else flew over Greenland.”

    “When did you go to Greenland?” Hunk asked.

    “I didn’t go to Greenland, I flew _over_ Greenland. I mean. I was in a plane that went over Greenland. You know what I mean.”

    “You’re sure it was Greenland?” Pidge tapped her chin. “Might’ve been Newfoundland. Or—Labrador. Hard to tell.”

    “All of Canada’s frozen, is what you’re saying.”

”That’s not even the same continent,” Hunk said.

    “No, I’m definitely not,” Pidge grumbled.

    Allura caught Keith’s eye then and gave him a sideways smile that told Keith she was maybe just as lost as he was. That wasn’t reassuring. Allura had never been to Earth. She didn’t have a reference for all the nonsense the other three were spouting, not like Keith should. Was it possible to spend most of a life on a planet and still be an alien?

    “Okay, okay,” Keith cut in just as Lance and Pidge were dissolving into a pseudo-argument about where “Canadian Ice” actually started (“Are you trying to be annoying?” “I guess we’ll never know.”). “Let’s get going.”

    Hunk and Allura were smiling, sharing their own half-exasperated, half-fond look. Pidge was trying to fight down her own little grin by stoking her irritation, but Lance knew he had her and he was grinning.

    All teeth. Wide. Bright, with his eyes shining and looking so extraordinarily blue in a sea of green.

    Keith felt a little more than half-fond.

    He looked away.

    Pidge led the way down the slope, the others skidding down the after her. They caught themselves on tree roots, stirring up tacky dirt that clung to their boots and marked the usual stark-white of their armour. It was cool, and there was a slight wind that stirred enormous, veiny leaves around them. Keith’s hair kept blowing against his face.

    Lance and Hunk let out simultaneous squawks when they found a giant, fat worm digging into the ground, its back-end (or what Keith thought was its back-end; he didn’t actually know what a worm butt looked like, least of all in space) wiggling up at them.

    “Gross,” Lance muttered, but he looked a little pleased, staring down at it.

    Hunk made a disgusted noise and hopped over the worm and the next root, his arms waving for balance.

    “Come on,” Keith said when Lance didn’t move, still watching the worm. It wiggled out of sight, leaving a funny depression in the ground, and Lance finally looked up and targeted Keith with that big, stupid smile.

    “Hurry up!” Pidge hollered from below. “We’ve got a big rock to find!”

    “A Malarvian diamond,” Allura added.

    Keith turned away first, but it felt like Lance was still smiling at his back. Keith felt a little like the worm.

 

* * *

 

    “A what?” Keith tapped his fingers against his upper arm, doing his best not to hunch in on himself as his irritation grew.

    For once, Allura and Coran seemed to share that irritation. Allura’s arms were also crossed and there was an obvious twitch to her cheek that Keith had only seen a handful of times before. Coran, for his part, seemed to be choosing his next words carefully.

    “A Malarvian diamond,” he repeated eventually, slowly.

    Keith stared.

    “That...isn’t what I meant.”

    “What is it?” cut in Hunk, peering over Keith’s shoulder at the rotating image of something that looked suspiciously like an egg.   

    “It’s a dinosaur egg,” Lance said from Keith’s other side.

    Hunk’s laughter tickled Keith’s ear and he swatted at him.

    “I’m serious!”

    Coran considered this. “I guess they generally do come from giant lizards.”

    “You know what a dinosaur is?” Pidge said, prodding at the hologram.

    “Lance and Coran spend too much time together,” Hunk said cheerfully.

    Lance and Coran shrugged.

    “It isn’t an egg,” Allura said, her voice sharp and unimpressed. All eyes immediately went to her. “It’s superstition. It’s foolish. It’s dangerous.”

    “It’s poop,” Coran added.

    “Excuse me?” Keith said, because that’s what Shiro would have done.

    “It’s poop,” Coran repeated with a shrug and a sheepish twitch of his moustache.

    “No it’s not,” Keith said, because Shiro wasn’t there to stop him.

    “Oh boy,” Hunk muttered.

    “Oh brother,” Pidge agreed.

    “But,” Lance said, always the voice of reason at the most ridiculous of times. “The entire system joins the coalition if we get one.”

    “Apparently,” Allura said flatly. Coran’s moustache twitched again but Keith couldn’t read that.

    Lance spread his arms. “Then I guess the lizard poop is a diamond,” he said, a little generously in Keith’s opinion.

    Keith didn’t get how one stupid boy saying poop could be so endearing.

    So he looked away.

    “Let’s go get the diamond-poop,” he said and hated himself for so many reasons.

    Allura didn’t even try to hide her annoyance.

 

* * *

 

    So they piled into Green because Pidge won rock-paper-scissors (like she always did; Keith needed to figure that out) and they descended to a planetary equivalent of a national park in search of a giant space-lizard.

    “Is it still a space-lizard,” Lance said thoughtfully, his elbow bumping Keith’s. “If it’s on a planet?”

    “If it’s not from Earth, it’s from space,” Hunk decided.

    “Then what am I?” Allura said, raising an eyebrow at them.

    “A space princess,” Lance and Hunk said together, and Keith hid his laughter in a well-timed cough.

 

* * *

 

    The space-lizard, it turned out, was not a lizard, or a dinosaur.

    “Space-dragon,” Hunk yelled. “Space- _dragon_!”

    Neon blue, with two heads and a giant tail, barricaded into a river valley where the water ran too hot to touch (“Aw man,” Lance had sighed) _because a goddamn dragon lived in it_.

    “Quiznack,” Allura said.

    “Fuck,” Keith said.

    The space-dragon spread its wings and tilted its heads back and shot a jet of bright blue flame into the sky. The enormous leaves rattled around them. A few fell from their trees. It lowered its heads and looked right at them, four eyes blinking—glaring.

    “ _Move_ ,” Keith shouted, and the paladins sprang into action like it was another day at the office.

    And it kind of was, Keith thought.

    And it kind of wasn’t, Keith thought.

    And the fire followed them.

 

* * *

 

    That was how they got separated.

    It was a good enough story on its own. Keith had a running record of “things to tell Shiro when we find him” and the diamond-poop was already near the top. The space-dragon gave it a little more priority.

    Being alone with Lance in a forest that seemed at a perpetual slope moved this story a bit further down the list because there were some things— _some things_ —that Keith was just going to struggle a bit with.

    Lance, for his part, liked to rearrange the list based on what he felt was more important and it was a regular cause for late-night bickering.

    Lance, for his part, would not appreciate the space-dragon, diamond-poop story being moved further down the list because Keith was—well, because Keith was Keith.

    Anyways.

    The team got separated. The dragon was flying in circles over their heads, the viciously large moon hanging over them all and occasionally blotting out the light from the sun. Allura was ranting about superstitious nonsense (apparently Alteans didn’t think highly of sacred poop). Hunk had informed them all he had found another worm. And Pidge was reduced to grunts, either from awe or annoyance or maybe both.

    The comms were a mess and here were Keith and Lance, huddled at the base of an enormous tree while a dragon flew overhead.

    “I can’t believe this,” Keith said.

    Allura was still ranting in his ear, but they had all seemed to agree to let her have this one. Lance and Keith had shrugged at each other and then muted their mics.

    The dragon roared.

    “I really can’t believe this,” Keith said.

    “So, it poops eggs?” Lance said.

    Keith stared at him.

    Lance balked. “That’s why we’re here! To get its poop!”

    “Stop saying poop,” Keith begged.

    Lance grimaced.

    “And it poops diamonds,” Keith added and looked away.

    Lance huffed.

    They were quiet. The dragon and Allura were not. Diamonds, Keith realized, were one of many things that were suddenly _relative_.

    “— _ridiculous, foolish, they put it on an altar and they let it rot in the sun and the fumes are toxic. Toxic! Ten thousand years and the Yerarian Kingdom has yet to figure out how not to poison themselves in the name of—_ “

    “They have a lot of ships,” Lance said, hugging his knees and peering up. “Someone should remind her of that.”

    “I’m not doing it.”

    “ _You’re_ the Black Paladin.”

    “Where in the job description does it say: _calm Allura when she’s ranting_?”

    “I’m going to write a job description,” Lance replied with another huff. They looked at each other and then away. “It’s going to say Black Paladin Keith—“

    “Me specifically?”

    “Dude, you just wait.”

    Keith rolled his eyes.

    Lance raised a finger. “So, firstly, it’s going to say Black Paladin Keith has to calm Allura when she’s ranting.”

    “Lance,” Keith said, his patience thinning.

    Lance ignored him and raised another finger. Their shoulders bumped. “Secondly, Black Paladin Keith has to take one day off a week.”

    “What is a week?” Keith sighed. Relative, relative—everything was relative.

    “You think I’m joking but I am _not_.” Lance sucked in a deep breath. The dragon screeched. The trees rustled. “Three, Black Paladin Keith is not allowed to _avoid his boyfriend._ ”

    Keith stared. He opened his mouth. Closed it.

    Lance stared right back. He raised another finger.

    Keith grabbed his hand.

    “Are you kidding me?” he said. “Are you _kidding me_?”

    “I just said I wasn’t joking!”

    “Yesterday _I_ use the b-word and you’re all _haha gotta go_ and run the fuck away and now—“

    “I was flustered! Okay! I’m flustered easily!”

    “I haven’t been avoiding you! You’ve been avoiding me!”

    “ _What_?”

    “ _What_?”

    The trees rustled and Keith felt heat over his head. Automatically, they both looked up, but the leaves had already swallowed up most of the flames. Natural selection, Keith thought. Natural selection in space. Space-natural-selection.

    Or, was it evolution?

    “You’re distracting yourself!”

    “I’m not,” Keith retorted, lying like a liar.

    “I wasn’t avoiding you,” Lance said, sounding a little desperate and ignoring the obvious lie. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

    “Why would you think that?”

    “You keep looking away! I speak Keith, you know!”

    Keith flushed.

    “Oh boy,” Lance said, and there was a tremor to his lips that told Keith he was getting embarrassed too.

    Why was this so embarrassing? Why wasn’t it easy? Why were they hunting for dragon poop?

    “I—“ Keith paused. Steeled himself. “I’m very fond of you?”

    Lance laughed, and that somehow made Keith feel a lot better. His shoulders slumped, relaxed.

    “— _of all the stupid, ridiculous things they could have asked for when the fate of the entire galaxy is at stake. I’m starting to think his royal quiznacking highness asked this because he knows about the feuds between his kingdom and Altea about this stupid pile of literal poop—_ “

    “That’s not what you said yesterday,” Lance said.

    “I said a lot of things yesterday.”

    “No, you really didn’t.” Lance shook his head. He twisted their fingers together. The dragon yelled some more, and it sounded close. Not space-close, but normal-close. But Lance was grinning and looking right at Keith and Keith remembered the worm and wished he could burrow into the ground, or into Lance. “You did say you loved me, though.”   

    That he had. And Lance had—

    “And you _ran away_.”

    “Yeah, sorry about that.” Lance had the decency to look sheepish, at least.

    “Look,” Keith said. “It’s not a big deal. We just never...talk about it again.”

    “Put it on the top of the list,” Lance said. “Put it right up there. Put it right up above hunting for space-dragon diamond-poop.”

    “What?”

    Lance was grinning so wide Keith was afraid his face was going to split open. “Your list. For Shiro. Put it right up there. Make it the first thing you tell him.”

    “... _what_?”

    “Yeah. The second we rescue him from whatever tropical island planet he’s tucked himself away on—“

    “ _Lance._ ”

    “—you say: I told Lance I loved him.”

    Keith gaped.

    Lance beamed. He glowed, really. And it made Keith want to say it all over again.

    “Hey,” Lance said. “I think I love you, too.”

    “I have to tell him that, too?”

    “What? No. Please don’t.”

    And then it processed and Keith was sure his mouth was never going to close again.

    “Oh,” he managed.

    Lance squirmed. “Sorry for running away.”

    “Oh.”

    Lance squirmed some more.

    And that’s when Keith’s spine returned and he squeezed Lance’s hand and he summoned up the determination that had done so much for him the day before and he said: “Hey.”

    “Huh?”

    “— _Allura, just stop for one second—_ “

    Keith smiled and then smiled a little wider when the flustered shift on Lance’s face made its return. “You’re my boyfriend and I love you.”

    “— _I mean I agree with everything you’re saying but, Keith, Lance, it’s coming back your way and uh—_ “

    “That’s the first thing I’m going to tell Shiro.”

    “Gross,” Lance said, and it wasn’t that he was beaming so much as twitching a smile that told Keith he was happy.

    And that’s when the dragon shit on them.

    They both shrieked, diving out of from the once-safety of their tree as the steaming gold poop clattered down through the trees.

    “Oh, yuck,” Lance moaned.

    “How is this happening,” Keith groaned, clambering up a particularly large tree root.

    “How is this simultaneously the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me _and the most disgusting_?”

    “ _Guys_ ,” came Hunk’s voice over the comms.

    Gagging, Keith unmuted his mic. “We’re here.”

    “We’re covered in poop,” Lance added.

    “Not covered, exactly.”

    “What,” Lance said, staring at the largest pile of poop as more slopped off the trees. “Is that—“

    Well. They knew where the worms came from now.

    Large like sausages.

    Keith was never going to eat again.

    “ _Do you see any really big ones?_ ” Hunk said. “ _The kind that could pass for a diamond_?”

    “ _Ridiculous_ ,” Allura grumbled, and Keith agreed.

   

   


End file.
